Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Beebe stands tough -- UPDATE II

Though sponsors plan changes to try to make Hogzilla constitutional, Gov. Mike Beebe rightly continues to have strong reservations to any process by which the legislature sets up a honey pot for local projects, no matter how narrow in scope the project might be. This will be one of his first big tests. He's sending a clear signal that there's no way to amend this billl to acceptability. So far, legislators seem to be on a collision course with that viewpoint.

Worthy as the garden clubs, county fairs and rodeo arenas might be; as much as a legislator might like to favor a pet charity; as bad as Bigelow needs its potholes filled, it's not sound state policy to make money available for the lucky ones with the best political access to the system.

UPDATE: Brummett's blog has some good commentary on this subject. He gets at one theme of many of the Hogzilla pork team. They come from a school that says they shouldn't have to pay anything for their play pretties -- no local contribution, no private contribution, just big brother picks up the tab.

UPDATE II: The Senate added the promised amendments today to add gubernatorial appointees, stagger terms and have three grant cycles over a two-year period. It sounds better. But the House and Senate leaders still control the process and I suspect they still believe they'll retain guaranteed personal pork, else why try to pass the Hogzilla Commission at all.

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